Aviation climate deal could undermine Paris Agreement

BONN 14 November 2017. A new Columbia
Law School report reveals major shortcomings in how
the UN aviation body (ICAO) interprets transparency and
public participation requirements. The report’s findings
come amidst a closed meeting in Montreal that kick-starts
the approval of rules for ICAO’s new carbon offsetting
scheme. A separate Carbon Market Watch analysis on the scheme’s impact on the
Paris Agreement calls for an urgent overhaul of the ICAO
decision making process in line with countries’
obligations and international common
practice.

This week, the
36 member countries of the UN’s international aviation
agency (ICAO) Council meet for closed talks in Montreal to
discuss rules on its carbon offsetting scheme -known as
CORSIA. Established in October 2016, the new carbon market
is intended to compensate for the industry’s emissions
growth above 2020 levels.

A new Carbon Market Watch
analysiswarns that a careful design of
the rules is necessary to avoid undermining the goals of the
Paris Agreement. This brief comes off the back of a new
Columbia Law School reportshowing that unless the
governance structure and transparency of ICAO’sdecision
making process are significantly improved to allow public
scrutiny, the aviation scheme risks poor quality and
illegitimacy.

Eva Filzmoser, Executive Director at
Carbon Market Watch
said:“A lack of public
scrutiny has allowed ICAO to develop climate policy in
isolation. The aviation offsetting scheme has serious and
direct implications for the Paris Agreement, and if
outstanding issues are to be resolved before CORSIA goes
online, this clandestine practice must end.”

The aviation scheme will have a direct impact on
countries’ compliance with the Paris climate targets.
While climate talks currently underway in Bonn discuss
accounting rules for emission reduction transfers between
countries, it is unclear how emission reductions purchased
by airline operators are booked to avoid double counting of
reductions towards ICAO and the Paris goals.

Obligations under the Aarhus Convention and common
transparency practices

While in principle, the ICAO
general rules of procedure promote public participation, the
Carbon Market Watch analysis finds that these rules have so
far been interpreted in a thoroughly narrow fashion by
keeping the outcome of political meetings and important
documents relating to development of the CORSIA locked away
from the public domain.

The Aarhus Convention obliges its
signatories to grant the public rights of access to
information, participation in decision making process and
access to justice on environmental issues. The secret
decision making under which the rules for CORSIA are
developed conflicts with signatories’ obligations to share
information on the negotiations. ICAO’s practice is also
in stark contrast with many other UN policy fora, such as
the maritime body (IMO) or climate body (UNFCCC), that
generally provide engagement opportunities to the
public.

Aoife O'Leary, author of the study
said:“The ICAO rules of
procedure allow for access to information and public
meetings but inexplicably these rules have not been followed
in the decision making process around the sector's
offsetting scheme. And this despite the obligations the
Aarhus Convention places on many of the ICAO member and
observer countries, meaning the signatories have so far been
complicit in keeping the development of the CORSIA in the
dark, away from public scrutiny.”

Parliamentarians
in Italy and Sweden [1] have already asked their governments
for more information on the CORSIA. At the EU level, a
number of Members of the European Parliament [2] have asked
the European Commission to release documentation as the
CORSIA will impact on the EU’s climate targets for
2030.

As the ICAO Council concludes their meeting to agree
on draft rules for the new scheme, Carbon Market Watch calls
upon those ICAO Parties that are also Party to the Aarhus
Convention to adhere to their transparency obligations and
disclose all details of the CORSIA negotiations to provide
opportunity for public debate ahead of their adoption in
June 2018.

Kelsey Perlman, Aviation Policy
Officer at Carbon Market Watch
said:“Aviation’s measure risks blowing a giant
hole in the Paris Agreement. The irony is that delegates in
Bonn and Montreal are currently negotiating interlinked
climate issues, with one held in public and the other behind
closed doors. ICAO needs to allow for more public scrutiny,
but the truth is we can’t afford to keep waiting to see
how this measure affects global climate ambition. The
European countries that have defended transparency this week
in Bonn while sitting in the dark in ICAO, need to open up
the debate.”

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